Honorary doctorates 2013

Stockholm University has selected this year’s honorary doctors, who have all contributed in a distinctive way to the University's activities in research and education. They include Lennart Aspegren, prominent lawyer with an impressive career both in Sweden and abroad, and Mattias Klum, one the world's premier nature photographers. Furthermore, Tom Moring has been selected in the humanities and Frances Goldscheider, Lawrence W. Sherman and Bruce E. Wampold have been selected in the social sciences. In the natural sciences, in addition to already mentioned Mattias Klum, also Frances H Arnold, Jón Egill Kristjánsson, Øystein Hov and Peter Jenni have been selected. More information about the honorary doctors is given below.

Law

Lennart Aspegren is a prominent lawyer with impressive professional achievements both in Sweden and internationally. He has served as judge at the Svea Court of Appeal and Legal Counsel at the Ministry of Finance as well as member of the Labour Court and the Supreme Social Insurance Court. Some of his international assignments include Vice Chairman of the OECD Public Management Committee (PUMA); judge at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) 1995-2000; and member of the two-man UN Expert Committee on the Gaza Conflict in 2011. During his time as judge at the ICTR, Aspegren decided the Akeyesu Case – the first international trial in history where criminal responsibility for genocide was tried, which made a significant contribution to the development of international law in this area.

Humanities

Tom Moring is Professor of Communication, particularly journalism, at the University of Helsinki. He is an internationally renowned and respected scientist whose work ranks in the nexus of the development of media research and minority language studies. He has been a visiting researcher at Stockholm University, and in this capacity both contributed to research initiatives and course development in the media field. Tom Moring’s research interests cover journalism, communication, minority languages and language rights (including commissions for OSCE and the Council of Europe). In his capacity as a specialist for the use of the (electronic) media in journalism, he is a “Professor II” at the Sami University (Sámi Allaskuvla) in Kautokeino, Norway. In addition to this he is competent in a handful of key European languages, Swedish and Finnish, and is familiar with Meänkieli as well as aspects of Sami conditions. With his broad scientific coverage and expert knowledge in many research areas, he is also an appreciated authority among scholars in the Finnish language at Stockholm University.

Social Sciences

Frances Goldscheider is College Park Professor at the University of Maryland. Her research in demography, with a gender based perspective, has focused on family issues such as family formation and dissolution, childbearing and parenting as well as structural factors and new family roles. Her scientific production is extensive, comprising several key books for the demography discipline. For many years, Goldscheider has collaborated with researchers at Stockholm University in several research projects, resulting in recurring periods as a visiting researcher at the University.

Lawrence W. Sherman is Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge and Distinguished University Professor at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. Sherman is one of the world's leading criminologists within policing research, and he has also made significant contributions in several other areas of key importance for criminology such as restorative justice, prediction and prevention of murder, public confidence in the criminal justice system as well as systematic reviews of various types of crime prevention. Sherman is also co-chairman of the jury for the Stockholm Prize in Criminology – an internationally recognized award for researchers who contribute to significant developments in criminological research.

Bruce E. Wampold is the Patricia L. Wolleat Professor of Counseling Psychology and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Wampold’s research has essentially been focused on methodological and theoretical issues regarding the effects of psychotherapy. His research has made significant contributions to the work on the establishment of evidence-based practice carried out in the American Psychologiocal Association (APA). Wampold’s conclusions on mechanisms of psychotherapeutic interventions, which underline the importance of contextual factors, have received support also outside the psychotherapy sphere, for e.g. treatment of substance abuse and young people with "behavioural problems". Wampold’s research has thus come to be at the centre of a broad international discussion around different kinds of attempts to establish an evidence-based practice in the treatment and rehabilitation of psychosocial problems.

Natural Science

Frances H. Arnold, Professor at the California Institute of Technology, is a world-leading researcher in the field of rational evolution of biological systems. Her development of protein engineering is aimed at understanding evolution and its applications from the chemical level to biological organisms and ecology. Industrial applications of her research include biocatalysts for "green chemistry". Arnold's research focuses on areas ranging from informatics, engineering and biotechnology to natural evolution and ecology.

Jón Egill Kristjánsson, Professor of Meteorology at the Department of Geophysics at the University of Oslo, is influential in atmospheric science and an internationally leading climate scientist. He has a wide area of expertise in theoretical and experimental meteorology, but is best known as a climate scientist. A common theme in Kristjánsson’s research is the description of clouds in numerical models of the atmosphere. Since 2005, he has had a leading role in the development of NCAR/CAM, which is one of the most advanced climate models.

Øystein Hov, Head of Research at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and Professor at the University of Oslo, has long been one of the most prominent figures in research on the chemical composition of the atmosphere and how air pollution affects the atmosphere and our climate. He has led development of atmospheric chemical transport models and observation networks for development and evaluation of these models. Hov has very successfully presented the research results in the political sphere and has been a key figure in establishing and maintaining research-based policies to improve our air quality and reduce acidification and eutrophication in Europe.

Peter Jenni, senior scientist at CERN, was a driving force in the creation of the collaboration which has built and uses the ATLAS detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Jenni has played a very important role as the leader of the collaboration with a leadership based on thorough knowledge and big own effort. The so far most notable result of the collaboration is the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. Jenni has worked in close collaboration with physicists from Stockholm University since 1986.

Mattias Klum is an internationally renowned nature photographer and filmmaker, who with his ten covers in the National Geographic Magazine, has established himself as one of the world's premier nature photographers. Klum has since late 2009 been involved in environmental research and education at Stockholm University, through his increasingly active relationship with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. He is co-author of the book “The Human Quest,” which is a summary of the Centre's research and which with words and images speaks to laymen. Klum is senior fellow at the Centre where he gives guest lectures for Master’s students and inspires interdisciplinary studies and contributes to the research by his wide experience of social-ecological realities around the world.

Conferment ceremony on 27 September 2013

The new honorary doctorates are conferred at the University’s installation and conferment ceremony on 27 September 2013. For questions about the ceremony, contact Inga Horndahl, Head of the Conference Services, Stockholm University, cell +46 (0)70 567 97 80, tel +46 (0)8 16 2280, email inga.horndahl@su.se.

An honorary doctorate is an expression of the University's appreciation of outstanding contributions in one or more of the University's areas of academic activity. The awarded honorary doctor should be affiliated with Stockholm University or have contributed to the University's activities in some way.